[BITList] It almost is

[John Feltham]

I didn't know that this man had done all this...

Check out his will!

ooroo




To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2010-07-11



Wolstenholme,  Kenneth  (1920-2002), football commentator, was born at Cavendish House, Cavendish Road, Worsley, near Manchester, on 17 July 1920, the son of Thomas Wolstenholme, a cotton merchant, and his wife, Euphemia, nee Redgrave. He had two brothers and two sisters and was brought up a Methodist. The family was prosperous enough in the 1920s both to own a car and to send three of the children to private schools. But the impact of the depression on the cotton trade meant that Wolstenholme went first to Cromwell Road council school, Swinton, before winning a scholarship to Farnworth grammar school, Bolton, in 1933. He had a precociously early interest in sport. His father first took him to see Bolton Wanderers at the age of four. Cromwell Road was a hot-bed of rugby league but at Farnworth association football was the favoured game, and the young Wolstenholme played in goal. But it was not so much playing that stimulated his sporting imagination as writing about it.

On leaving school in 1937 Wolstenholme enrolled on a shorthand and typing course at Pitman's College in Manchester and took a lowly job on the Manchester Evening News. In June 1939 he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He was soon flying every weekend and being paid ten shillings and sixpence a day for the privilege. After the outbreak of the Second World War he trained as a bomber pilot, flying Bristol Blenheims from a range of stations including Wattisham in Suffolk and West Raynham in Norfolk. Commissioned as a pilot officer in May 1942, he retrained on Mosquitoes and joined 105 squadron based at Marham, Norfolk. Just before D-day the squadron moved to Bourn in Cambridgeshire and he was promoted flight lieutenant and awarded the DFC. He flew 100 missions [I think that they mean operations?] and received a bar to his DFC in March 1945. Operational air crew had seven days off every six weeks, and in wartime sport was enthusiastically pursued by many servicemen, including Wolstenholme. Unfortunately he broke a wrist while keeping goal, one of a number of sporting injuries which led his then commanding officer to ban aircrew from 'dangerous sports'. Wolstenholme's last job in the RAF formed a link with his pre-war journalistic beginnings and his future: he worked in RAF public relations under the leading sports journalist of the Daily Express, John Macadam. He was demobilized in April 1946. Towards the end of the war, on 31 July 1944, he had married Joan Brownhill (1921/2-1997), daughter of Albert Brownhill, advertising agent, of Eccles, Lancashire. They had two daughters.

After the war Wolstenholme set his heart on becoming a sports journalist. This was not a job for which formal qualifications then existed. In order to get started, an aspirant required persistence, the ability to network, and luck. When Bolton Wanderers reached the first post-war FA cup semi-final in 1946 Wolstenholme wangled a press ticket. In the press box he met Harold Mayes, who had been his timekeeper when he had been learning to fly. Mayes was sports editor of the Sunday Empire News, and asked Wolstenholme to write 300 words on league cricket in Lancashire. This in turn prompted an offer from the BBC to act as commentator on the Scarborough cricket festival. Football commentaries for the BBC British Forces Network and the Light Programme were later followed by a successful television audition.

Very little British football was televised in the 1950s, but Wolstenholme's reassuringly educated northern accent became its voice on cup final day-he commentated on every one from 1949 to 1971-and for a range of increasingly important international matches. It was Wolstenholme who described the first defeat inflicted on England at home by a foreign country (excepting the Republic of Ireland) when Hungary won 6-3 at Wembley in November 1953. It was also Wolstenholme who commentated on the European cup final and the world cup finals, beginning with those of 1954. Hence he was the obvious choice to be both presenter and leading commentator when Match of the Day was introduced on the BBC in August 1964. Few saw the first edited highlights programme, because it was on BBC2 (which had only begun transmission that April); but when it was switched to BBC1 it attracted 12 million viewers at its peak. Wolstenholme commentated on a main match, with shorter highlights from two other games.

By this time Wolstenholme had an agent and a contract which established him as the BBC's leading football commentator. In December 1965 he suffered a heart attack, but when the world cup came to England in 1966 he was there to accompany viewers throughout the vicissitudes of the tournament, and to mark England's victory with a phrase which by the time of his death had been rebroadcast more often than Churchill's 'We shall fight them on the beaches' speech. With England leading 3-2 and the game almost over, Wolstenholme described England's final goal: 'Some people are on the pitch. They think it's all over'. Then, as Geoff Hurst kicked the ball into the back of the net, he added, 'It is now.' Wolstenholme's turn of phrase did not resonate immediately with the English public but after the whole game was repeated on BBC2 to accompany the start of the 1966-7 football season its simple, restrained appropriateness captured the collective imagination. Many repeats thereafter, and the use of They Think It's All Over as the title for a long-running popular television show, also helped to etch it in the public consciousness. Wolstenholme regretted that he was only paid £60 for the commentary, although he also received royalties on the surprising number of occasions it was rebroadcast.

In many respects Wolstenholme was the footballing voice of that understated, emotionally controlled England that the Second World War had left largely intact. He limited his comments to what he thought was essential, and his preparation was to sharpen his pencil and make sure he had a match programme. By the end of the 1960s some BBC sporting executives began to look for someone more emotional, more excitingly in tune with the changing attitudes of a new generation of football supporters who saw football as part of the same cultural continuum as popular music. Although Wolstenholme commentated on the 1970 world cup, David Coleman replaced him as BBC commentator for those matches played by England. Wolstenholme left the corporation in 1971 after commentating on twenty-three FA cup finals, five world cups, and sixteen European cup finals.

After leaving the BBC, Wolstenholme worked for British Caledonian and became secretary of the Anglo-American Sporting Club. He also worked on the football highlights programme produced weekly by Tyne Tees television. In the 1990s he became one of the voices behind the Channel 4 weekly magazine on Italian football, Gazetta Football Italia. He wrote many books, including two volumes of autobiography, They Think It's All Over (1996) and 50 Sporting Years and It's Still Not All Over (1999). He spent his last years in the village of Galmpton, near Brixham, Devon. He died on 25 March 2002 at Mount Stuart Nursing Home, St Vincents Road, Torquay, of kidney, liver, and heart failure. He was survived by his daughter, Lena, his wife and one daughter having predeceased him.

Tony Mason 

Sources  K. Wolstenholme, They think it's all over: memories of the greatest day in English football (1996) + K. Wolstenholme, 50 sporting years and it's still not all over (1999) + The Times (27 March 2002) + Daily Telegraph (27 March 2002) + The Guardian (27 March 2002) + The Independent (27 March 2002) + gazetted details, Royal Air Force Personnel Management Agency, RAF Innsworth, Gloucester + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives  FILM BFI NFTVA, documentary footage + BFI NFTVA, light entertainment footage + BFI NFTVA, sports footage SOUND BL NSA, performance recordings
Likenesses  two group portraits, photographs, 1966, Getty Images, London · photograph, 1970, Getty Images, London [see illus.] · two group portraits, photographs, 1958-94, Popperfoto, Northampton · photographs, 1996-2001, Rex Features, London · photographs, 1954-99, Empics, London · photographs, 1966-98, Universal Pictorial Press and Agency, London · obituary photographs
Wealth at death  £1,118,980: probate, 21 Aug 2002, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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